One of the most common complaints about the Edmonton Oilers in recent years has been the club’s persistently weak supporting cast. Nobody stated it more plainly than Craig MacTavish upon his assumption of the GM’s chores in the spring of 2013, when the eminently quotable Silver Fox barked: “We had a lot of guys that the best they were going to be in any given game was a non-factor.”

The rookie GM then went on to hire a rookie coach and bring in depth players like Jesse Joensuu, Will Acton and Luke Gazdic to fill out the bottom of the roster. Not surprisingly, history repeated in more ways than one, as the Oilers returned to the bottom three in the NHL with lack of depth being a significant part of the reason.

It’s interesting then to compare that sorry time (captured in this rather acerbic column responding to the above MacT-ism which is recommended reading for hardcore masochists) to the current state of affairs.

Among the biggest changes are the men running the show. After a series of first-timers in both the GM and coach’s position, the team went a very different route in 2015, hiring Bob Nicholson, Peter Chiarelli and Todd McLellan with each fresh off a long, successful stint doing the same (or similar, in Nicholson’s case) job in a high-profile location.

Interesting then to follow the approaches of both GM and coach as they start the second year of what the optimistic Oilers fan hopes might become a long-term partnership. Chiarelli has amassed sufficient depth that the Oilers are able to ice an NHL-worthy 20-man line-up even after accounting for the injuries of fourth line and third pairing types like Matt Hendricks, Iiro Pakarinen, Brandon Davidson and Mark Fayne. All were guys expected to play the grunt minutes on the penalty kill or in the defensive zone.

For his part McLellan has found a role for every player on his roster, or should I say, every veteran. The three rookies have seen spot duty, with both Jesse Puljujarvi and Anton Slepyshev dressing for the first game but alternating since. Each night one has played right wing somewhere in the middle six, while the other has observed proceedings from the press box. On the blueline, Matt Benning hasn’t played a lick, as McLellan has opted for his veterans on an ongoing basis. Same went for Laurent Brossoit who never got off the bench during a brief recall. The Oilers may be a young team, but they have iced but a single Calder-eligible rookie in most of their games.

Of particular import is how McLellan has found significant roles for vets like Mark Letestu and Anton Lander, nominally his fourth and fifth centres behind the Big Three of Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Not much ice time left for the plumbers, one wouldn’t suppose, but one would be wrong. Since Lander was brought on for Game Two specifically to address faceoffs and the penalty kill, he has teamed up with Letestu in both situations. They have been an effective tandem on the PK, and have found chemistry with youngster Tyler Pitlick on the Palindrome Line (51-55-15). They’re definitely the fourth line, ranking 11-12-13 among Oilers forwards in even-strength ice time per game, but Letestu and Lander have supplemented those minutes with their crucial role on the PK.

How crucial? These numbers tell a tale:

The percentage of ice time is based on Edmonton’s nightly average of 6:48 shorthanded, though Lander has only played 5 of the games so his percentage is slightly skewed. Still, that is clearly the #1 duo that is called on to start most kills and frequently gets another shift in the second minute. That can be confirmed in their faceoff stats, where between them Letestu (25) and Lander (16) have taken two-thirds of the Oilers’ shorthanded faceoffs (41 of 61). They have formed a potent righty-lefty duo that has handled plenty of own-zone work at even strength as well.

Lander in particular has been crushing it on the dot, boasting a 62% win rate despite taking a surfeit of lower-percentage draws on the PK (where the opponent has more winger help on scrambled draws) and/or in his own zone (where he has to put his stick down first). None of which has slowed down Lander in the last two games, in which he posted an impressive 19/25=76% overall count on the dot including 11 of 15 in his own zone and an impressive 6 of 7 shorthanded d-zone draws. Can’t expect him or anyone to maintain quite such a torrid pace as that, but suffice to say that the PK played its part in those two wins, 3-1 over St. Louis and 3-0 over Winnipeg, and consistently starting with the puck safely won and down the ice was part of that. So too was generally excellent penalty-killing by the Swede once the puck was in play.

Letestu hasn’t dominated in the faceoff circle (just 46% so far), but has taken one step further, chipping in with timely offence including a pair of (wait for it) shorthanded, unassisted, game-winning goals. Both times the pivot jumped on a stray puck high in the d-zone and broke away to score a massive tally. Two road games, two road wins, with those shorties playing a huge role in both. He has also chipped in with a pair of assists, and while Oil fans would be foolish to anticipate 4 points every 6 games we have every reason to expect him to reach 25 on the season, more-than-respectable fourth-line production. Letestu has scored at least that many points in 5 of the last 6 seasons, which is to say, a helluva lot more offence than Oilers have seen from their bottom-line pivot most years.

The oldest Oiler not currently on injured reserve, the 31-year-old Letestu spoke to his comfort in playing a fourth-line role on this club, admitting in a candid interview on the Jason Gregor Show Tuesday that he had batted too high up the order last season when he was given a steady dose of third-line minutes due to the injury absence of Connor McDavid, then Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. So far in 2016-17 he has seen his nightly average slashed by 2½ minutes to 13:15, but by eye and by stat they have been effective minutes. In the process he seems to have won over a portion of the fanbase that was, shall we say, underimpressed a season ago.

At the risk of having my official mail-order The Analytics People certificate revoked, both Letestu and Lander impress this observer as men of character whose focus is on team success. Those dreaded intangibles, but you know what, I’d rather have them than not have them.

Lander is effectively replacing renowned “glue player” Matt Hendricks in many roles: 4 LW, heavy d-zone starts, big PK minutes and faceoff skills among them; fortunately, Anton has a little stick-to-it-ive-ness of his own, now in his sixth year in North America and tenaciously hanging on for his NHL life by the tips of his faceoff-winning fingers. He’s not quite as tough as Hendricks, maybe, but he’s not quite as slow either. (Hard to skate in all that glue, maybe.) At 25 Lander is just entering the prime years for a defence-first player. He plays his 199th NHL game tonight, just approaching that threshold that many see as the apprenticeship period for rank-and-file NHLers. His offence may be in hibernation — his lone assist came off of, wait for it, a faceoff win — but to this early point Lander is showing there are other ways he can help a hockey club win.

To turn briefly to the defence, McLellan has done a variation of the same thing, albeit not to the same extreme. His bottom-pairing defenders have been his top penalty-killers, at least when measured by ice time.

All six defenders are seeing regular ice time, though in inverse order to their even-strength opportunities. Nobody over 50% like the two forwards, but a big role for the depth players once again. The sample size is small, so let’s just call it an early trend rather than a hardcore policy that McLellan is giving his bottom-line players top billing on the penalty kill. One result is that every Oilers forward save Pitlick is solidly into double digits for average ice time, while the Nurse-Gryba pair has settled in around 17 minutes a night, a nice number for a third pairing. It’s a good situation for Nurse in particular, who is seeing his overall minutes scaled back even as the coach is charging him with a key responsibility on the PK unit.

Tonight that Oilers’ penalty-kill unit will be put to a severe test as the deadly Washington Capitals powerplay comes calling. Headlined by ace triggerman Alex Ovechkin, the Caps have been far and away the best team in the league with the man advantage in recent years — indeed, in the last 4-and-a-bit seasons their 23.9% conversion rate is nearly 3 full percentage points better than anybody else’s. Put another way, second-place Pittsburgh at 21.0% is as close to 16th place L.A. Kings (18.1%) as they are to the high-flying Caps. Such margins are the mark of a truly dominant group.

In his impressive interview, Letestu spoke to the need for discipline to stay out of the box, how a team like the Caps will tear apart a PK if they get repeated looks at it. That, along with the performance of top penalty-killer Cam Talbot and the wild card that is Connor McDavid, will be key for the Oilers as they look to extend their three-game winning streak against the defending Presidents’ Trophy champions.

Based on Tuesday’s practice the lines and pairings will remain unchanged from the group that blanked Winnipeg in the Great Outdoors last Sunday. No reason to change, and a compelling one to keep that bunch together.

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